1932
Washington weather is delightful again. It gets that way in the spring and fall every year. Streams of tourists have been coming steadily, but this is the season they should choose. This is sort of an invitation to all of you, and when you do come, make an effort to find a few of your classmates who are in the city's biggest industry, the Government. It should be part of the sight-seeing routine to have a talk with some bureaucrats, to find out what they do for the money you pay them, how hard they work, what they turn out, and how it affects you. It should make you want to vote harder, one way or the other, when you get home.
John Clark's way of describing in the last News-Letter, the poor results shown by '32 in the last Alumni Fund drive should inspire us a little to break our record next year. Whoever runs the drive should take encouragement from the thought that next time we couldn't support him less. One correction should be made in John's list of attendants at Reunion: There was no "Mrs. W. H. Mack" with Deke; whatever the spectacularly attractive Miss McDonald might be some day, Deke gave it to be understood that she was just a girl he brought along.
Someone is likely to accuse me of being partial to news of fathers of three, but I certainly do feel close to all of them these days. The other evening, after Alice had gone to the Library of Congress chamber music concert, and I had finally induced sleep to come to little Alice (ten months, remember?), I picked up the phone to discuss thrice-a-fatherhood with Jim Wakelin, whose third son, David Shattuck, was born in Washington on September 27. The other two are Alan four, and James 3rd five, and their plenty busy mother (I speak from experience) is Peggy, who still finds time to do a lot of work for the Smith College Club of Washington. I have learned more about that decoration I mentioned last month: Jim received a "Commendation from the Secretary of the Navy" for his work as a Lt. Commander in the remote measurement section of Operation Crossroads. My own interpretation of this is that he was to learn how much of the Bikini atom bomb explosion could be felt in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Any better, brief, unclassified description of the job will be welcomed.
Some of you may have seen from the papers that Joe Fanelli, who several years ago was a member of the Board of Immigration Appeals of the Department of Justice, is one of the counsel defending John Santo of the Transport Workers Union in New York, in deportation proceedings brought by the Department of Justice on the ground of Communist affiliation. The case presents many nice questions of law, constitutionality, civil liberties and labor relations. Joe (you guessed it) has three children, a boy, seven, and two girls, five and three. They live in Arlington, Va., while Joe's law office is in Washington. Joe once had the idea that adding the third child would somewhat diminish the competition between the first two. He thinks it did, but on balance the new variety of strife contributed by the third has probably proven that three make at least as much noise as two. I agree.
As I write this (October 5) Dick Cleaves is in Santiago, Chile, according to an itinerary he sent me last month. The trip, on which he will be accompanied by his wife Margo, will take them through Central America and down to Buenos Aires, then back via some West Indies. There's no evidence from Dick's letter that it's anything but a pleasure trip; it ought to be fun. Dick's three (of course) children are Perri, five, Peter, three, and Susan, four months. He said, in September, "tomorrow they will be exposed to the famous Egyptian Mystic, Swami Pharaense Schlogulzum (a new name, I suspect for Grandma—MHC.) who will place them in a state of suspended animation for two months or so while Margo and I make the grand tour through South America. We are sorry to have missed Reunion, but Susan heard there were a lot of Dartmouth men foregathering and wisely stayed in her little warm home until the danger had passed. Now I guess we don't have to worry about her for another fifteen years." Guess again, Dick, about that third one. The Cleave's address is 198 W. Passaic Ave., Rutherford, N. J.
I see Don Macphail (the Massachusetts, not Maryland, one) now and then in the Old State Building, where he works in the Publicity Division of the U.S. Budget Bureau. Don's three (natch) children are in exactly the same age groups as mine: Bruce, seven, Joan, five, and Angus, born in July. Don and wife were at a farewell party the other evening given by some of the friends of Ed and Margaret Marks, who are taking their (you'd never guess it) two children, Katie, five, and Tommy three, by air to Europe toward the middle of October. Ed has a new position with the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organization, which is to be a United Nations operation and is concerned primarily with the solution of the displaced persons problem. Ed's experience with the War Relocation Authority, which handled the displaced Jap community affairs and related problems during the war, makes him a natural for this job. He left the Office of the Housing Expediter after its recent budget cut. We expect to know plenty about Switzerland when the letters from Owsley and Marks come pouring in.
I seem to have to rely on the newspapers for the nuptial news. It's a department that I shouldn't have expected to be so active after fifteen years on the loose, but three more classmates are to be congratulated this month: Stanley Leach of Davenport, lowa, is engaged to Barbara Sue Frank, also of Davenport. The clippings indicate that Stan is in the bottled gas business. Herman Goodman was married on August 21, to Marylin Marks, both of New York City. Whitey, I learn from the clipping, was a Navy officer during the war, and is a graduate of Columbia Law School—but I have evidence that he edits the Greenpoint (N. Y.) Weekly Star. Charles Ryan was married on August 18, to Mrs. Helen Gardiner Lyons in Cambridge, Mass. Charley, I see by the paper, was a Major in the Army during the war and is now with Choate, Hall & Stewart, Boston law firm.
A clipping dated in June announces that the Rutland (Vt.) Herald has been sold to a new corporation headed by Robert W.Mitchell. It says that the seller was William Field, who, I feel certain, must have been the same Bill Field who was in my class ('28) at Andover. Is that right, Bob?
I wonder how many of you took the trouble to look for the misplaced end to the column in the July issue on our 15th Reunion. For those who haven't found it yet, and would like to know where it is, I suggest looking nineteen lines down and one column to the right. The typographical eccentricity that got it there baffles me, but I imagine that the lateness of the copy accounts for it.
1932 PREXY AND HIS FIRST LADY: Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Chandler on the scene for their Fifteenth Reunion back in the hills of New Hampshire.
Secretary, 3909 North sth Street, Arlington, Va.
Treasurer, 607 Front Street, Hempstead, N. Y.
